After two frustrating days of visiting local gaming stores, I’ve given up on trying to find a copy of Spore for the moment. For those of you who’ve been living under a rock, Spore is the new epic evolutionary based strategy game by Sim City and The Sim’s designer Will Wright. You get to take a living cell all the way through the chain of evolution- where you actually build your character to adapt to the environment- from a single-celled organism to a galaxy-faring explorer.
As frustrated as I was, I cooked some breakfast and sat down to watch one of my favourite shows here in Canada, Daily Planet on The Discovery Channel. To my hasty amazement, they were doing a week-long feature on the science behind the Burning Man festival in Nevada. What was Daily Planet, a show that focuses on science, doing at the world’s biggest hippy festival? They were doing exactly what is often overlooked in science…art.
Art, Science, Art, Science…. The word’s from an article I read about Spore came to mind “Spore is a work of art.” A quote from Will Wright crawled up from the deep reaches of my mind.
““There were deep motivations in the early phase from the work of a lot of evolutionary biologists, like Richard Dawkins and Edward Wilson.” And “We wanted to convey the sense that evolution can bring up a surprising diversity of weird, interesting, strange things.”
Spore, a game based on science, is art. The artistic installations at Burning Man can only be built with a deep knowledge of science.
In a way, science is an art in itself, but I want to look at the more common definition of art.
the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance. It often elicits a specific human emotion or response desired by the artist. In this respect, an artist is always trying to convey something through their art.
I want to take this idea of Art is Science, Science is Art, and apply it to atheism. People often complain about the lack of atheist inspired art, but when you ask them what they would consider atheist art, a few muddled words are the only sounds that follow a long mournful pause. Since atheism is simply the non-belief in God, I want to focus on art that represents the new-atheism. That is, atheism as an end result of the methods of scientific naturalism, inquiry, and skepticism. Here – with examples – are what I consider to be the different ways that art can be classified as new-atheist art:
1. Art that is made for the purpose of expanding knowledge and/or visually experimenting with representations of science.This section rejects art based on appeals to faith or tradition. Rather, it focuses on the future. Often, the art is the end-result of a specific tool, developed by science.
2. Art that is made for the purpose of representing a passion for science and its promotion.Most often, the science is biology.
3. Art that is made for the purpose of representing non-belief and the philosophy behind it.A subsection of the first two sections can be the art on the covers of science-fiction novels. Why? Because they often represent scientific ideas, and they are meloreolistic.
Often, religious art doesn’t even need to be changed – Poe’s law personified in art.
8. Art that glorifies the exploration and understanding of the cosmos
(could be classified as a subsection of the 2nd category, but I figured it was so widespread that it merited its own number).
This post has only shown visual examples. I understand that I left out music, sculpting, architecture, literature, comics, and anything else you would consider art.
I have seen atheist poems and poetic atheist quotes that could be classified as art, but what about books promoting atheism and science? There is much merit in disseminating the ideas of atheism and science in a way that influences people. Carl Sagan’s work often borders on poetic. He uses writing skills and a creative imagination to create metaphors of science that are appealing to a wide audience. I think this constitutes art. And Christopher Hitchens is an exemplar of fine literary talent, while Richard Dawkins holds his own with his metaphors and literary talent. What do you think?
But then, what about more rigorous scientific works like peer reviewed journals? Surely they are not art. They have no appeal to human emotion, no poetic literature, and no aesthetically appealing visual representations that convey anything more than the intent of the paper. Peer reviewed journals are cold, rigorous, and precise. Within the scientific community this is ideal, but a general populace wants an appeal to emotion. It is the job of the science journalist to promote science with a human edge. It is the job of the science journalist to be an artist.
…I look forward to hearing your ideas on this.
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Artistically Challenged
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008Creating a gender equal group diversifies your physical attributes. What it doesn’t diversify are the thoughts and activities of your group. Getting more people who are interested in science and math – but are simply the other gender isn’t really doing anything for the bigger picture. Besides, I think we’ve already created a more or less safe space for women to come into – they just need to be encouraged. We haven’t made our groups and centers a safe space for some. I think focusing more on advancing our movement to be more inclusive to the arts and social sciences is far more important than encouraging women. All of our events and gatherings are totally open to women who are interested in coming – however, for the art and social science community there is rarely a place for them to fit in.
We tend to have a pretty scientific crowd, and that’s not surprising. Generally speaking a lot of those who are interested in skepticism and the secular outlook on life are science majors of some sort. Evolution, stem cell research, abortion etc. can all be justified and argued as valid with science and are often argued as wrong and invalid by the religious. So it doesn’t come as a surprise to see those with a science background falling into secularism.
What we need are events that cater to this other side. There is definitely the market for it – there are sacreligeous artists everywhere, poets writing about vast voids of religious nothingnesses, social scientists writing about the psychology and philosophers wanting to hear about ethics. Not only do they fit into our mandates by being secular and asking questions but they are promoting and exercising freethought and more importantly freedom of expression!
Their art is breaking boundaries of the church and religion being infallible, and there is something to be said about the effectiveness of this controversy. Not only are people using their feelings about religion to create something with aesthetic value but they are also reaching out to the emotions of people who haven’t been able to do that.
There is also the possibility of bringing the two together so that even more people can find an emotional connection to the works. Personally when I see a picture or a painting or a complex biosphere or environment I am filled with awe. I am reminded that something so magnificent has developed over time. Something so complex is growing right in front of me, and I take advantage of it far too often. I connect emotionally.
The same (or similar thing) can be said for someone who sees a recreation of a galaxy or a cell. Atheistic humanism seriously needs this sense of value and allowance of these important and deep feelings. Reason has enabled us to work out in our minds what needs to be done and to devise strategies to follow through with these things. But feelings and passion give us impetus to act and keeps us from falling into that black never ending hold of emptiness. There is something to hold onto, the awe, wonder and beauty of the universe that can be expressed through a painting as a way to constantly remind us of what we’re actually living in and being a part of every day.
That’s enough fluff talk from me for like a century…. – I’ve had enough of all these scientists coming together and acting like they have all the answers to the world. The world wouldn’t be the same and would be a stone cold rock without art. So why aren’t we incorporating that into our movement more?
Here is my wish, want and challenge to all the students out there or people running little groups – do something for your artists! Hold an art gallery, do a poetry reading, start an arts and crafts night (okay, maybe not that one…) or do events that caters to this crowd! Enough of this BS about bringing women into the movement – we’re here. And more will come, you just have to give them time. But we’re not making it easy for the artists and social scientists, and I think this is a far more important task. It’s an entire culture and social world that we’re not including. By excluding them, we’re shutting a lot of possibilities off on ourselves.
Artistically challenged.
Tags: art, atheism, freethought, science, social
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